I’m going to compare two picture books, The Dragon and the Unicorn and The Shaman’s Apprentice. They are both illustrated by Lynne Cherry. She has also written the first. The second is written in collaboration with Mark J. Plotkin. I picked these two books because I wanted to see whether or not working with someone else alters Cherry’s storytelling. It does not. At least not by much. Both books are didactic, not that they aren’t fun to read. The Dragon and the Unicorn is about saving the growth forest. The Shaman’s Apprentice is about respecting the Tirio knowledge (although at one point the main character says to the shaman, “Tamo, Wise One, the day must come when they again see that you are the wisest of them all.” This seems to put the Tirio knowledge back into a hierarchy with the “white men’s knowledge,” which makes me uncomfortable.) The writing style and mood of the books are similar, and what strikes me is that there are more differences with the illustrations than there are with the writing.
Both books have a green-tone base and the characters are realistically drawn, though the similarities end there. The Dragon and the Unicorn has thick borders around every page, filled with fairytale vines and images from the plot on that page. The borders help set the mood for the story, and help highlight character arcs. They also constantly remind the reader that this story is a fairytale with a good ending. The Shaman’s Apprentice has no borders. The illustrations always fill up both pages of the book and text is imposed onto the left-hand side with a box. The picture style and the coloring are bolder. Maybe this choice adds a sense of reality to the book, in that this is about a real place, as opposed to a magical forest.
On a slightly different note, why has Cherry chosen to use dragons and unicorns for the first book? Why did she decide to use fantastical elements to tell a story about saving the old growth forest? One reason could be that it might augment the interest of a child in a topic that they might otherwise be indifferent to. Fantasy personifies “wisdom” with the unicorn, and therefore shows the child that it is to be cherished. A fantastical setting also allows Cherry to draw the forest as more enchanted than a photograph might show, again to augment interest and care in the reader. I think that it is successful in these goals.
I do want to bring up Cherry’s choice of the race of the royal family. Although the story is set in a time with knights and dragons, the royal family is African American. I love that this is the case, and it makes me more interested in the book than I otherwise would be. This story does not follow the traditional of Arthurian legends or the history of the English royal family. I am curious as to the Cherry’s reasons behind this choice. One of the effects this choice has on me is to make me like the book more. It also makes me like the royal family more, maybe because the family challenges literary traditions.
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Cherry, Lynne. The Dragon and the Unicorn. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1995.
Cherry, Lynne, and Mark J. Plotkin. The Shaman’s Apprentice. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1998.
